Date(Year,Month,Day):%Y-Yearwithcentury(canbenegative,4digitsatleast)-0001,0000,1995,2009,14292,etc.%C-year/100(rounddown.20in2009)%y-year%100(00..99)%m-Monthoftheyear,zero-padded(01..12)%_m blank-padded ( 1..12)
%-m no-padded (1..12)
%B - The full month name (``January'')
%^B uppercased (``JANUARY'')
%b - The abbreviated month name (``Jan'')
%^b uppercased (``JAN'')
%h - Equivalent to %b
%d - Day of the month, zero-padded (01..31)
%-d no-padded (1..31)
%e - Day of the month, blank-padded ( 1..31)
%j - Day of the year (001..366)
Time (Hour, Minute, Second, Subsecond):
%H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded (00..23)
%k - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, blank-padded ( 0..23)
%I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, zero-padded (01..12)
%l - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, blank-padded ( 1..12)
%P - Meridian indicator, lowercase (``am'' or ``pm'')
%p - Meridian indicator, uppercase (``AM'' or ``PM'')
%M - Minute of the hour (00..59)
%S - Second of the minute (00..59)
%L - Millisecond of the second (000..999)
%N - Fractional seconds digits, default is 9 digits (nanosecond)
%3N millisecond (3 digits)
%6N microsecond (6 digits)
%9N nanosecond (9 digits)
%12N picosecond (12 digits)
Time zone:
%z - Time zone as hour and minute offset from UTC (e.g. +0900)
%:z - hour and minute offset from UTC with a colon (e.g. +09:00)
%::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC (e.g. +09:00:00)
%:::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC
(e.g. +09, +09:30, +09:30:30)
%Z - Time zone abbreviation name
Weekday:
%A - The full weekday name (``Sunday'')
%^A uppercased (``SUNDAY'')
%a - The abbreviated name (``Sun'')
%^a uppercased (``SUN'')
%u - Day of the week (Monday is 1, 1..7)
%w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)
ISO 8601 week-based year and week number:
The week 1 of YYYY starts with a Monday and includes YYYY-01-04.
The days in the year before the first week are in the last week of
the previous year.
%G - The week-based year
%g - The last 2 digits of the week-based year (00..99)
%V - Week number of the week-based year (01..53)
Week number:
The week 1 of YYYY starts with a Sunday or Monday (according to %U
or %W). The days in the year before the first week are in week 0.
%U - Week number of the year. The week starts with Sunday. (00..53)
%W - Week number of the year. The week starts with Monday. (00..53)
Seconds since the Unix Epoch:
%s - Number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
%Q - Number of microseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
Literal string:
%n - Newline character (\n)
%t - Tab character (\t)
%% - Literal ``%'' character
Combination:
%c - date and time (%a %b %e %T %Y)
%D - Date (%m/%d/%y)
%F - The ISO 8601 date format (%Y-%m-%d)
%v - VMS date (%e-%b-%Y)
%x - Same as %D
%X - Same as %T
%r - 12-hour time (%I:%M:%S %p)
%R - 24-hour time (%H:%M)
%T - 24-hour time (%H:%M:%S)
%+ - date(1) (%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y)

This method is similar to strftime()
function defined in ISO C and POSIX. Several directives (%a, %A, %b, %B,
%c, %p, %r, %x, %X, %E*, %O* and %Z) are locale dependent in the function.
However this method is locale independent. So, the result may differ even
if a same format string is used in other systems such as C. It is good
practice to avoid %x and %X because there are corresponding locale
independent representations, %D and %T.